Religious Education

To Know You More Clearly

‘To Know You More Clearly’ is currently optional and is being phased into Catholic schools across the Liverpool Archdiocese from September 2023.

We are following the programme as it is rolled out by the Archdiocese of Liverpool for each year group.

The date for the role out of the new curriculum in St Mary’s is as follows:

Autumn 2023 EYFS

Spring 2024 Year 1

Summer 2024 Year 2

September 2024 Year 3

September 2025 Years 4 – 6

Structural Elements

The programme of study for religious education in Catholic schools presented in this directory has a framework with four structural elements: knowledge lenses, ways of knowing, expected outcomes, curriculum branches.

Knowledge Lenses

Knowledge lenses set out the object of study for pupils; they indicate what should be known by the end of each age-phase. They divide the content of the programme of study into four systematic subsections for the study of Catholicism and two additional lenses for the study of religions and worldviews, which together comprise the six knowledge lenses of hear, believe, celebrate, and live (the study of the Catholic religion), dialogue, and encounter (the study of other religions and world views).

Ways of Knowing

Ways of knowing set out the skills that pupils should be developing as they progress through their curriculum journey.

The three ways of knowing are: understand (What will I see and hear to help me understand?), discern (How will I discover more?) and respond (What can I do now?).

Branches and Lenses

The model curriculum presents the expected outcomes in six curriculum branches that correspond to the six half-terms of a school year. Pupils revisit each branch in each year of school they come to a deeper understanding of its significance for Catholic belief and practice, which allows them to make links between the four knowledge lenses within the context of the narrative of salvation history. The six curriculum branches are: creation and covenant, prophecy and promise, Galilee to Jerusalem, desert to garden, to the ends of the Earth, and dialogue and encounter.

Expected Outcomes

Pupils will be assessed against the expected outcomes which are a synthesis of the content outlined in the knowledge lenses and the skills described in the ways of knowing. Each age-phase will have a prescribed set of outcomes that will indicate what pupils are expected to know, remember, and be able to do, using the language of the ways of knowing and applying it to the discrete knowledge within each lens.

Dialogue and Encounter

The two lenses called ‘dialogue’ and ‘encounter’ set out the requirements in relation to the teaching of other religions and worldviews. The first of these two lenses is called ‘Dialogue’ and is an exemplification of the Church’s teaching on the relationship between Catholicism and other Christian traditions, between Catholicism and Judaism, between Catholicism and other religions, and between Catholicism and non-religious or atheistic worldviews. In addition to understanding what the Church teaches about its relationship to other faiths, religions, and worldviews, pupils are also engage in a discrete study of other faiths, religions, and worldviews. This is done through the teaching that to love our neighbour is also to respect and esteem his or her culture, and to live peaceably with difference.

As pupils progress through school, pupils will study:

• Other Christian denominations

• Judaism

• Islam

• Dharmic religions and pathways

• Other religions and worldviews, including non-religious worldviews.